Santa Maria della Salute

Over the centuries, diseases
have contributed mightily to great art and architecture.

The Church of Santa Maria della Salute is a case in point. In October of 1630, after
nearly a third of Venice's 150,000 citizens had been killed by plague, the Venetian Senate
made an offer to God: "Stop the plague, and we'll build a church to honor the Virgin
Mary."

God came through, or maybe the onset of cooler weather reduced the population of
plague-ridden fleas. Whatever the reason, the plague was stopped in its tracks. The
Venetian authorities honored their promise by giving the Virgin a prime chunk of real
estate near the tip of Dorsoduro, where the Grand Canal merged with St. Mark's Basin.

In the resulting competition for a church design, the winner was an unknown architect
named Baldassare Longhena, who had proposed a massive octagonal basilica that combined
elements of Venetian Byzantine architecture with domes inspired by St. Peter's in Rome.
Longhena described his design as "strange, worthy, and beautiful...in the shape of a
round 'machine' such as had never been seen, or invented either in its whole or in part
from any other church in the city."

The resulting church wasn't completed until half a century later, in 1682. In
The Companion Guide to Venice, Hugh Honour describes Longhena's
legacy:

"If you come to Venice by sea--and any other approach is like entering a
palace through the back door--the most prominent of the myriad architectural marvels that
greet you is the church of Santa Maria della Salute.

"As if riding at anchor at the
entrance to the Grand Canal, with its balloon-like dome weighed down by great baroque
scrolls, this fabulous building dominates the scene even more than the Palazzo Ducale or
San Giogio Maggiore.

"It is the supreme masterpiece of the Venetian Baroque--and of its
author Baldassare Longhena, one of the few Venetian architects whose personality is strong
enough to glimmer through the mists of history. Contemporaries tell us that he was a short
dapper man, always dressed in black, of quiet and gentle manners. He had the embarrassing
habit of asking everyone he met their openion of whatever work he then had in hand. But
this apparent lack of self-assurance finds no echo in the magnficently extrovert and
ebullient buildings he designed, least of all in Santa Maria della Salute."

It's beyond the scope of this article to describe the church's architectural features
and interior, which are best studied while touring the church with Mr. Honour's
Companion
Guide in hand. Suffice it to say that the church is massive and awe-inspiring, with a
huge central space surrounded by archways that lead to side chapels. The basilica and its
dramatic steps of white Istrian stone are built on 1,156,627 wooden pilings that remain
intact after more than 300 years.

The Festa della Salute

On November 21 of each year, city workers lay a pontoon bridge over the Grand Canal
from the San Marco district to the Salute church. The huge main doors of the basilica are
opened, and Venetians walk across the canal to pay their respects to the Virgin Mary
or--at the very least--to tradition. Gondoliers bring their oars to be blessed by a priest
who recites his incantations from the church steps.

Reaching the Salute church

Santa Maria della Salute is
on the opposite side of the Grand Canal from St. Mark's Square, near the triangular tip of
the Dorsoduro quarter. If you're visiting the Accademia art gallery or the Peggy
Guggenheim Collection, Salute is easily to reach on foot from either of those museums.
(Just make sure you have a good map, or you could get lost.)

The Grand Canal's scenic
No. 1
vaporetto route has a Salute station between the Santa Maria del Giglio and San Marco
waterbus stop. Alternatively, you can ride the
traghetto (a small, hand-rowed gondola ferry) from the Campo del Traghetto in San
Marco, then walk to the Salute from the landing on the Dorsoduro side.

After exploring the Salute church, be sure to visit the Dogana di Mare (the old maritime customs house)
next door. And if you don't mind a bit more walking, continue around the tip of Dorsoduro
and stroll down the Zattere for a nice view of Giudecca, another of Venice's islands,
across the wide Giudecca Canal. (If you're lucky, you may see a passenger ship cruising to
the Stazione Marittima farther down the canal.)